The EASY STEPS To Train Your Brain & Strengthen Your Mind | Dr. Titus Chiu

We are at the forefront of the evolution of neurology. Everybody should be doing these things. So some early warning signs of Alzheimer's and dementia are forgetfulness, like when you're in an interview and you're on the spot and you don't remember the question that you practiced 30 minutes ago. And when you walk into a room and you're like, what? Why did I come into this room for? Where are my keys? or even things like just a slowing of overall processing speed, like your thoughts aren't as sharp or clear like they used to be, or even your movements, your reaction time. So you might have issues of balance or coordination. And so these are all very significant because they're early warning signs for potential neurodegeneration, things like Alzheimer's and dementia. But maybe even chronic traumatic encephalopathy, you know, a sequel or a sequel, something like that, right? And, and result of and concussion that wasn't treated properly. Because these are all clues as to what's actually happening. They're windows into your nervous system. Because it's our brain. The reason why it's so important, I think, and one of my missions is to share with the world why the brain is so important and relevant to everyone, is that it allows us to think. It allows us to feel, to move, to have dreams, and to create. And so if that's not working well, you can experience things like forgetfulness. You could experience things like having brain fog or just you're just not feeling sharp and it's like really subjective so it's hard and a lot you might go, you know, if it gets bad enough, you might go to a doctor or they run all the tests and everything's normal and they're just like, it's in your head, right? But they're right. It actually is in their head but not in the sense that they thought. because it's specific neural networks, specific areas of the brain that if they're not as strong as they were maybe five, ten years prior for you, then you can experience those symptoms. It really depends on what's going on with you as an individual, right? Because the reason for Alzheimer's and dementia, there's these root causes for it. And so if we can address the root cause for Alzheimer's or for dementia, there's so much things we can do. For example, we can put together, like for my patients, I put together customized menu plans or dietary supplements targeted to their imbalances, to their physiology, what their body and their brains need, you know? And then there's other things we can recommend, lifestyle recommendations, give them stress management techniques like a simple breath in.

And.

A breath out can just totally calm a person's nervous system. and prevent further degeneration or further inflammation, you know, and it can allow healing to happen. We are at the forefront of the evolution of neurology. Like, what is possible with healing in the brain? I am so excited for that. Everybody should be doing these things because we don't want to wait until someone develops Alzheimer's or dementia. because that's kind of like the end game, right? We want to make sure we catch those things earlier on. But the exciting thing is, even if it is end game, there's things we can do to reverse that. And so there's things we can do early on to just make sure we have brain health. 'Cause everyone talks about cardiovascular health, right? We want to make sure that our heart's healthy. And so we exercise, we, you know, change our diets and we do all these wonderful things. But the brain, same thing, the brain can respond to those things as well. There's this radical new field. It's been around in the scientific communities for a long time called epigenetics. And that just speaks to our ability to take control of our health. And that applies to the brain as well. And we can do things like change our diet. We can change the way we think about things, our mindset. We can make changes in lifestyle. We can exercise more. We can connect more with our loved ones. All those things have been proven to actually slow, stop, and even reverse any type of neurodegeneration. Things that are good for the heart are also good for the brain, right? Things such as exercise and diet, lifestyle, specific supplements, stress management. But the brain is unique. Not only does it respond and require nutrition to thrive, but it also needs exercise and activation. Exercise and activation, what do I mean by that? things like playing chess or mental stimulation like mindfulness practices, meditation, right? Or learning Sudoku, learning how to play a new instrument, rock a nap, you know, learning a new language, see? Well, no. That's what I call a top-down approach where you can use your mind to train your brain, okay? But there's also another way that I call sensory genomics where we can use all the senses like sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and this other really curious and essential sense known as proprioception or body awareness. Proprioception allows us to get a sense of our own groundedness and being on this planet. And so if that's off, you can have problems of balance and coordination, but it could be so subtle that it's just in the back of your mind. And one of the main functions of the brain is to allow us to move on this planet. and not fall over. Really, we weren't born like reciting poetry, playing music, all those wonderful creative things, you know, filming with red cameras. We were born to walk and navigate on this planet. So if the systems in our nervous system start to break down that allow us that, then we have to use all of our mental resources to be able to balance. And so all of a sudden we can experience brain fog. and not really know why or forgetfulness or our capacity to deal with stress is just like right at this level because those systems aren't working well. So we should always be challenging ourselves to learn new things whether it's learn how to play the piano, learn a new instrument, learn a new language or spending time with family or meeting new people. All these things grow and strengthen the brain. but in addition, like I said, all these different senses, we can use the senses. So, for example, the next time you're washing your dishes, okay, just close your eyes and really bring your attention to how that feels, like how the water feels and the warmth of it and the soap suds, right? And the sound of the water. Because when you do that, when you bring your awareness to your senses, you actually powerfully activate the brain. In Norman Doidge's book, right, I just have to geek out about that for a bit. He talks about all these neuroplasticians, right, that all throughout the, that's what I do in my practice. And so I do things like aroma therapy, where a person smells like rosemary or lavender, and it can help with their anxiety. Because it's actually not only impacting our nose, it's actually activating specific areas within our nervous system that can calm our emotions. that's sensory genomics. Another example is what I call vestibular rehab, where we spin someone in a chair and it activates these little canals in the inner ear. And so if they have problems of balance or coordination or anxiety, a lot of times it's because they have an imbalance in their inner ear and we can retrain that. That's sensory genomics. Going out with me for an enjoyable glass of wine and then I teach you the differences between Pinot Noir from Sonoma and from Willamette Valley, that sensory genomics because you're not expanding your palate, you're expanding this area called your orbital frontal cortex in your frontal lobe that allows you to differentiate between the different lines. That sensory genomics. The way I use diet in my practice, it's very personalized, number one, and number two, it's therapeutic. We're finding out that we can actually use food as medicine, as a therapy, that can be more powerful than a medication. And so it depends on what my patient's coming in for. So for example, a patient came to my office with Alzheimer's and so I did the whole workup and I found that they would best respond to a low sugar diet plus removing all inflammatory foods such as gluten, dairy, grains, those are the most common. But then my patient with post-concussion syndrome, it was horrible. She was a student of mine, actually, and she had suffered a traumatic brain injury. And she developed bilateral subdural hematoma, which is bleeding in the brain. And because of that, she was in the midst of medical school. She could no longer do what she had set out to do to become a doctor. And so she had brain fog, she had balance problems, she had headaches, and when she tried to study and read, she'd just get really tired and just would crash out. And so I did the workup, and in my experience, a lot of those patients, a lot of patients with concussion, they respond really well to what's known as a ketogenic diet. And that looks at higher fat, but healthy fats, middle moderate protein, you know, meat and things like that, and really low carbs. and everyone's different in how much they can tolerate. Some people can eat, like for example, my wife, she can drink like juice upon juice and still be in ketosis. I'm impressed. Whereas with me, I gotta keep it really down to about 15 grams of carbs a day. But I did that myself and oh my God, and this is probably speaking again to that concussion that I had suffered. Like when I did the ketogenic diet, I didn't think I had issues with blood sugar or things like that or brain fog, but all those things went away. I was like the Energizer Bunny. I just kept going and going. I'd go through this entire day at work. I'd see patients back to back to back to back. Yeah, like for nine hours straight, right? Maybe with a little break. I'd get home, hang out with my family and my wife, and they'd be like, who is this guy? He's got so much energy. He's not irritable anymore. And he's really focused and on point. And so, yeah, the ketogenic diet works really great for people suffering from concussion and people with Alzheimer's disease. They do really well with the low sugar diet, anti-inflammatory. But again, it's totally personalized based on the root cause for that unique individual. The ketogenic diet, it's so fascinating when you actually look at the history of it. Like initially, originally, it was used way back in the day, that dude named Hippocrates, right? The father of modern medicine, he was using it way back in the day to address things that he described what we know now are seizures, right? And in addition, about, I believe, the 1930s, they had found that children suffering from pediatric epilepsy would do phenomenal with a ketogenic diet because it was stabilizing their brain cells. Because people who have neuronal or neurological dysfunction, their brains are no longer communicating in this synchronous fashion. It's just like noise in the system. It's this instability, right? Have you ever not slept for like a day? and then you woke up and you're just really groggy and you're irritable, you're just like, I don't want to see anyone, I don't want to do anything and the lights are just like, oh, get me out of here. That's because this area of your brain or underneath your brain called the brainstem is just like that. It's just at any little stimulus like light or sound, you're just like, it's too much, right? But imagine now a patient with seizures or with concussion or Alzheimer's, they're like that all the time. And so the ketogenic diet, what it does, it helps to balance and smooths out the neuronal communication. And so we're able to handle a lot more. So then if you go into a bright room, you don't squint or you don't get a headache. Or when you wake up, even if you don't sleep that well, you don't feel irritable or brain foggy. So when I work with patients suffering from neurological symptoms of Alzheimer's, or concussion, or just brain fog, I take a very comprehensive and investigative approach to get to the root cause of why they're having those symptoms in the first place. And that can involve a very comprehensive medical history where I sit down and I talk with you one-on-one to really understand your unique situation. Because your brain cells don't live in a little Petri dish, right? Your brain is connected to every single organ in your body. It's connected to the world around you. So all those things can influence your brain health. And so from there, when I tease out some root causes, then I move on to an advanced neurological exam. And in that exam, I check for things like balance, coordination. I look at how your eyes are moving because those are all windows into how well your brain is working. And then from there, if necessary, I run some more advanced tests. I might run stool tests, saliva tests, blood tests, urine tests to actually understand what's happening with your biochemistry, right? Because imbalances in biochemistry or neurochemistry can throw off brain function as well. And so when I gather all that information, I dive deep into what's going on with you and understand your unique situation, then I put together that plan, a very personalized plan that looks at diet and very personalized diet, targeted supplementation, lifestyle recommendations, exercise, and like I talked about before, sensory genomic therapies where we can actually activate and exercise the brain very specifically. And so some supplements I might recommend, you know, I have to put it out there. Everyone's unique, right? Everyone's different. There's a thing called biochemical individuality. But that being said, there's patterns. I've been doing this for years and one of the main things that the brain needs is essential fatty acids. So things such as omega-3 essential fatty acids, specifically DHA, docosahexaenoic acid. This essential fat, docosahexaenoic acid, it allows your brain cells to smoothly communicate with one another. And so if you're lacking in that, again, you can experience that noise in your brain. You might not hear anything, but you might experience again irritability or brain fog or mild forgetfulness. And when it comes to nutrition and supplements, one of the root causes that I'm trying to address with those tools is neuroinflammation. Neuroinflammation is one of the root causes for all neurodegenerative diseases, whether it's Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, chronic traumatic encephalopathy or post-concussion, Neural inflammation is one of the root causes that needs to be addressed in these conditions. The great news is that we can address those things naturally. Again, using things like supplements and diet, stress management, taking long, deep breaths, even long walks in nature with your loved ones or your dog. It's really calming and it helps calm neural inflammation. and there's actually specific brain exercise you can do to calm those things through a top-down approach that I was talking about before as well. Because your brain is unique in that it not only requires nutrition, it needs brain activation. And if we can target and activate these specific areas of your nervous system that are contributing to neuroinflammation, even without the use of diet and supplements just through your own mental machinery, which is amazing, you can calm those things down and address the root cause for your symptoms. Sensory genomics is a revolutionary way where we can activate specific pathways in your brain to heal the brain. And by using all the different senses that we have available, so it's non-invasive, it's safe, anyone can do it. And there's a simple three-step process that through many years of research seeing patients with neurological conditions, teaching, educating doctors about these different ways. I've put together this three-step program. Step one, to prime your cells for healing. Step two, to activate these specific areas in your nervous system and brain. And then finally, what's so overlooked in modern society these days is step three. integration. That's where after we prime ourselves through proper nutrition and exercise and breathing and then we activate our brain using these specific exercises. Step three is where we allow our bodies to integrate all of this and embed it into our neural networks. We integrate by unplugging. The world we live in today is just so frenetic and nonstop. and there's so much value placed on getting things done, doing this, being successful, achievement, achievement, achievement. And that's great. I'm all about that. But so many patients I see, one of the main root causes for their inability to heal is not integrating, not unplugging. And so it could be something as simple as lying on a patch of grass, right? and taking a deep breath in, connecting with Mother Earth and letting that sun hit your body. And like I said before, that ties in with step two, activation, when you're actually feeling that you bring your awareness, your attention to that moment and you just unplug from everything, right? You turn your cell phone off, you turn your TV off, you don't check your emails, right? You turn off the old mental chatter happening in your own brain. so integration is one of the most important steps in this three-step process that I see so many people not doing today and actually one of the main reasons why they're still suffering. What's the correlation between poop and brain function? A lot of the latest research is showing us that there's a strong correlation between gut health and brain health. In fact, the brain The second brain and the first brain are intimately related, embryologically. They come from the same tissue. And there's this bidirectional communication pathway we call the vagus nerve, where the brain can talk to this brainstem vagus nerve and then the gut can talk back. And so if you have imbalance in your gut, whether it's dysbiosis or infections, maybe even what we call leaky gut, that can release chemical signals crossing the blood-brain barrier, causing all kinds of problems like brain fog, memory issues, headaches, problems of focus and concentration. At the same time, the gut can communicate with the brain by what we call the vagus nerve, or it's an electrical signal which communicates with our brain. And so, by testing the stool, we get this beautiful window into the microbiome. It's the environment of our guts. And that can give us clues as to, is there an infectious process? Maybe a bacterial infection, a parasite causing neural inflammation, right, by traveling and attacking the brain. We can see if a person has leaky gut, where big food particles cross and enter, and then the immune system launches a response again, causing neural inflammation. We can get a window into the health of the actual cells themselves. We can get windows into inflammatory markers. So the stool test is a great way of getting a really important window into what's happening in a person's microbiome, which then could impact the health of their brain. So neurotransmitters are these special unique chemical messengers that allow your neurons, your brain cells, to communicate with one another. They can talk to each other. And the different neurotransmitters are kind of like different personalities. So we have something called dopamine, which is kind of like really excitable and motivated, right? And we have things like GABA, gamma-aminobutyric acid, which is like really chill and just, you know, the guy you want to just hang out with on the beach with. And we have things like norepinephrine where it's just like that fight or flight response. They just got to get things done, get things done, right? And so When it comes to neurotransmitters, when it comes to brain health, it's all about balance. So if we have too much dopamine, what happens? We can develop things like mania, or we can develop things like movement disorders where there's too much movement. Or have you ever gotten that thought stuck in your head, right? Or that song that keeps playing over and over? That's too much dopamine. Whereas if you don't have enough dopamine, Then you can have a slowing of your movements or kind of like a slowing of your thoughts, like we see in Parkinson's. And the same thing with GABA, it's about balance. If you have too much GABA, then you're just like, I don't want to do anything. This is very comfortable. Or if you don't have enough GABA, you're just always anxious and you always feel like you have to do something. You can't shut that off no matter how many exercises you do, breathing exercises, et cetera. So again, with neurotransmitters, it's all about balance. And when it comes to food and its impact on neurotransmitters, artificial sweeteners, like food coloring, things like that, specifically artificial sweeteners, they act, they can mimic one of the neurotransmitters we call glutamate. Now glutamate is extremely important. It's one of the most abundant neurotransmitters in our nervous system and it's like the on switch. Like when we turn it on, like things happen, right, in our brains overall. But if a person takes aspartame found in artificial sweeteners, it mimics glutamate and it's just too much for the brain to handle. It's like the on switch is happening over and over and over again. that the brain can't calm down. What ends up happening is what we call excitotoxicity, where the brain cells literally get really unhealthy to point they can actually die. For example, you know, you've heard of cocaine and you've heard of coca, right, where it comes from. So coca leaf has been used all throughout history, right, as a healing traditional medicine. But what happens when you take that coca leaf and you break it down to that specific compound we call now cocaine, and someone uses that and it exceeds the brain's ability to handle it, it literally destroys brain cells. And so that's the same thing for things such as MSG. MSG, it was actually isolated by a Japanese scientist from kombu. It's this delicious seaweed that naturally flavors soups and things like that. And so this scientist, this Japanese scientist, he's like, how can I isolate that, right, and get that umami flavor without taking the time to steep and soak that seaweed into that broth, right? And so they found a shortcut. But with that shortcut, it became this powerful substance that if we consume it at too high a level, guess what? Excitotoxicity. The brain can't handle it. Most people think MSG is found just in Chinese food, but it's found in so many different processed foods. And it comes with these hidden names. Because everyone's just like, oh yeah, most people now, right? We're a lot more conscious. We want to choose the foods we eat and be very conscientious. So a lot of people read, and if you don't, right, if you don't now, please start reading what you're eating. A lot of people these days are reading like, oh, MSG. So what they've done, right, the food companies, what they've done is they've hidden it. They've kind of disguised the name. They've camouflaged it.

I love looking at the brain. You know, that's sort of my thing, what I do. And it was just so clear, if your brain wasn't healthy, you were not likely to be happy. So the first strategy that nobody knows about is get your brain right. and your mind will follow. And there are a whole bunch of strategies on how to do that. The second one, which I stopped you.

Right there, can I just stop right there? That is such an important statement you just said. I don't want to go over it so quickly. Your brain is your brain, which is this, you know, putty-like structure in your skull. And your mind is who you are. It's your thoughts, it's your feelings, it's your perceptions. And your mind function is determined by your brain function. and yes, you can overpower your brain function if you're really strong willed in many ways, but it's really important Insight to understand that your brain and the quality of the health of your brain determines the quality of your mind. That's a big Insight that most people don't realize. Your brain creates your mind, right? If you're sad, I'm depressed.

I'm anxious.

They go, oh, it's, it's, it's, it's like a sore ankle. It's like a, like a. like a stomach ache, but your brain can't have a stomach ache or a sore ankle, so it has a mood change, right?

So you and I have been blessed to see some really cool people. And I was in Justin Bieber's docuseries in 2020 called Seasons. And he came to me at a really low point. And like many of these young superstars, they'll show up or not, they'll do what you say or not. And When he got really low, he showed up and he said, I think I get what you're trying to tell me. My brain is an organ, like my heart is an organ. And if you told me I had heart problems, I'd do everything you said. He said, so I'm gonna do everything you say, changed his diet, did hyperbaric oxygen, IV therapy. And he's better now than ever. He was just nominated for a bunch of Grammys, and I'm so proud of him. But if you don't get your brain right, it's really hard. You know, if you think of it like hardware and software, got to optimize the physical function of your brain, and then you can program it. And we have faulty programming, we'll talk about that, but you first have to get the hardware right.

Exactly. So go keep going on the seven things. I stopped you after the first one.

So the second one is happiness. is geared to your brain type. One of the big lessons I learned from imaging early on is that all psychiatric illnesses, all of them, are not single or simple disorders. They all have multiple types. Giving someone the diagnosis of depression is exactly like giving them the diagnosis of chest pain. Nobody thinks about it like that, but it's absolutely true that Nobody gets a diagnosis of chest pain. Why? Because it doesn't tell you what's causing it and it doesn't tell you what to do for it. I mean, you're not going to give everybody nitroglycerin. I mean, that would be stupid. But now we think of depression, oh, you're depressed, take Lexapro or you're depressed, take Luvox, which is really interesting. We may talk about that in the pandemic.

Yeah, it turned out to be a joke for COVID.

Yeah, it's really interesting. And I think I know why. But ADD is not one thing, it's seven different things. One of my best-selling books of all time, Healing ADD, I talk about seven different types. And then when I was thinking about happiness, I'm like, the thing that makes spontaneous people happy, like scary movies, having an affair, jumping out of an airplane, the persistent person would actually those things would make him or her miserable. And so it's really important to know your type. There are five primary types. So you balance that means, you know, most any reasonable thing will make you happy. Spontaneous, you need novelty or you're not happy. Persistent, you need routine or you are not happy. Sensitive, you need connection. They were most in the pandemic with the isolation. And the cautious people, they need peace to make them happy. And so know your type. I have a online quiz called our brain health assessment, brainhealthassessment.com, you'll see which of the 16 types you have. And then, well, what are the things more likely to make you happy? And all of these strategies have questions. And for get your brain right, the question, the little tiny habit, I don't know if you know BJ Fogg, but I worked with him for six months on tiny habits. So we have 50 tiny brain habits. But the mother of all tiny habits for the brain is for strategy one, is this good for my brain or bad for it? So when you go to do something, you just ask yourself, is this good for my brain or bad for it? So when we were at Saddleback, our first fight with Pastor Warren was, you gotta get rid of the donuts. Are it's good for your brain or bad for it? I mean, obviously it's bad for it. I don't know if you remember that, but I do.

And the soda, the pancake breakfast, and the biscuits and rolls, and the whole thing. We had our work cut out for her. They did good, though. I would say they, I was impressed at that scale of change that they did so quickly. It was very impressive.

It's amazing. And then the question for the second strategy, am I doing something today that makes me uniquely happy? So it's really diving into happiness is not the same thing for everybody. So don't say it's novelty and gratitude and appreciation and fun and comedy because it's different. based on your type. Three, you'll appreciate is supplement your brain. We live in a society of deficiencies. And if you're nutrient deficient, especially serotonin, you know, most people don't know that birth control pills deplete serotonin. And I've seen this over and over in teenage girls. They go on birth control pills and now they're anxious or they're depressed and no one's thinking it's changing their neurotransmitters. And my favorite happy supplement is saffron. I've been following the science of saffron for 20 years. 24 randomized controlled trials against Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, amitriptyline, Effexor, equally effective. But rather than being anti-sexual, you know, put someone an SSRI and they have trouble having an orgasm or their libido goes down, saffron is prosexual and it makes them more interested. And there's studies showing that saffron helps with memory, even in people with mild cognitive impairment. So when the pandemic started, I just released a product I love called Happy Saffron, saffron zinc and curcumin, and I'm like, Right at the beginning of the pandemic, my dad died. I had to close our Manhattan clinic. I mean, it was a disaster. I'm like, I'm taking this. So this is the supplement. I take many of them, but that's my favorite one. And so I think we might agree probably everybody should take a really good multiple vitamin. Everybody should take an omega-3 fatty acid. You should optimize your vitamin D level. test it, odds are it's low, and then work to get it high normal because we're in a pandemic. And then it depends on your brain type. So our spontaneous people do better with stimulating supplements like rhodiola, our persistent people do better with serotonin boosting supplements like 5-HTP. The sensitive people do better with saffron or SAMe. and the cautious people do better with GABA, theanine, magnesium. I'm just a huge fan. And too often you see this is people go to their family doctor, their nurse practitioner, and they end up on a benzo. And it's like, no, no, no. That's like 20th on the list. Let's do meditation, diaphragmatic breathing. Let's try GABA and magnesium. Please don't do that because why would you start something? Somebody can't stop. And I see them creating so many problems with inappropriate medication use.

Well, they don't even work that well. That's the thing. If you took Prozac and you're cured and you were happy, life was good. Wonderful. But it just basically no better than a placebo for mild or moderate depression. So, Correct. That's another problem.

Well, the pharmaceutical industry doesn't want to be in the order business. I mean, they consciously made the decision to be in the reorder business, that once you start something for a lot of psychiatric medications, they change your brain to need them in order for you to feel normal. So many people are just wickedly afraid of going off antidepressants because of the withdrawal. from them. And I'm not opposed to medication. I'm just opposed to that's like the first and only thing you do without getting someone's diet right, without getting their habits right.

Right.

Well, that's so true. I mean, you also talk about in the book this whole idea of four circles of happiness. It's an exercise you do to make you happy. How? What is that?

Well, when I was in medical school, actually the first week, our dean came in the classroom and he said, Never think of patients as their diagnosis. Always think of them in four big circles. And it's just stuck with me. He went to the board and he drew the first circle, which is the biological circle. So, you know, as a doctor, you need to know all about their biology and as a psychiatrist for me, our primary organ is the brain. So brain health, as we talked about. The second circle is the psychological circle, which involves development and how they think. And secret number five is master your mind and gain psychological distance from the noise in your head, which we'll talk about. It's a super fun circle, but it's basically the psychological. Circle. And then he drew.

One of the things that you said is, Don't believe every stupid thought you have.

And I didn't learn that till I was 28 years old in my psychiatric residency at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. And I'm like, my eyes got really big because, you know, I've struggled with anxiety. And I'm like, why didn't they teach me that in third grade? Right? Just because I have a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it's true, whether or not it's helpful, whether or not I should attach to. And it's not the thoughts you have that make you suffer, it's the thoughts you attach to that make you suffer. And then he drew the third circle, which is the social circle. He said in the social circle, it's how are your patients' relationships and what's their social situation? And two years into this pandemic, the social situation for so many people has just been a disaster. from the societal unrest, the political divide. At Christmas, I had never seen family division like I have seen. And I'm saddened by it. And I kept telling my patients over and over and over again, without connection, you have no influence. So you're a vaxxer, you're an anti-vaxxer, whatever. You know, people were like not getting together and angry at each other. and I'm like, if you don't stay connected, you have no influence on the other person. And then the last circle, which I just love so much, is the spiritual circle. It's, why do you care? You know, what is your deepest sense of meaning and purpose, your relationship with God, with the planet, with the past, with the future? And really talking about that with my patients. And I have to tell you, Mark, Nine out of 10 patients when I ask them what their goals are and why they think they're on the planet, they haven't thought about it. And I'm like, you know, a business is not going to go unless it has a mission statement and a purpose and a strategic plan. And so that's actually number seven of the happiness secrets is live each day based on clearly defined values, purpose and goals. And purposeful people are happier. But if you don't know, and there's a great exercise in the book on how to find your purpose that I love. And, you know, one of my favorite patients that came out last year that I've been her doctor for about 11 years is Miley Cyrus. And I love her so much. And she has just grown up so much in the last couple of years, and she's very purposeful. She knows what she's about and what she wants to accomplish. And her bad habits didn't fit. And ultimately, that's the question to ask for secret number seven, is does it fit? Does my behavior fit the goals I have for my life?

Interesting. So, you know, you've been doing this for a long time, like 40 years, and you've looked at a bazillion brain scans, and, you know, you did what most psychiatrists never do, which is they look at the organ that they're treating. I want a concept, you know? What did you learn through that detour that you took from traditional Psychiatry? And, and what are the sort of big lessons that you got and that helped change the way you treat your patients?

You know, I became a psychiatrist when I was in medical school. My first wife tried to kill herself, and I took her to see a wonderful psychiatrist. And I came to realize if he helped her, which he did, it wouldn't just help her, but ultimately it would help me. It would help our children and our grandchildren and. I became a psychiatrist because I loved it. But I joined the only medical specialty that never looks at the organ it treats. And I was an x-ray technician in the army before I went to medical school. And I'm like, well, of course you should look. How do you know unless you look? And when I got the opportunity to look, it literally changed everything. I realized that psychiatry is broken. making diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data. That's just insane. That, you know, we're run by the pharmaceutical industry. That's not a good thing because the motive isn't wellness, the motive is profit. And when I started looking at the brain, I'm like, oh, let's dump the term mental illness. I've always hated that term. And let's really focus on brain health. If I can get your brain right, the biological circle, your mind is going to be better. Now, you got to program your mind with your values, purpose, goals, not believe in every stupid thing you think. But if the foundation of mental health is sick, you're not going to be okay. And that's where I learned like Lyme disease can have a negative impact on your mind. COVID-19, what we know now is it activates the limbic or emotional brain and 20% of people who have COVID will get a new mental health diagnosis within the first five months. Wow, that's just craziness. I learned that diet matters. Secret number four. is only love food that loves you back. That you are in a relationship with food. And so many people are in an abusive relationship with food. When we were doing the Daniel Plan, one of the pastor's wives, you know, I scanned her brain and she's in my office and I was drinking tea and she said, could you put the tea down? I'm like, no one had ever asked me that before. But, you know, I'm polite. And I put the tea down. She said, I didn't want you to spit it at me. And I'm like, I've never spit tea at anybody. She said, after you and Dr. Hyman lectured, I told my husband that I'd rather get Alzheimer's disease than give up sugar. I'm like, did you date the bad boys in high school? Because that's obviously a relationship with sugar.

The question then becomes, well, how do we improve our brain health to improve our mood?

So it's really three big strategies. You know, you and I both spend a lot of time trying to make things really simple for people. So the first one is brain envy. You got to care about it. Nobody cares about their brain. Why you can't see it, right? You can see the wrinkles in your skin or the fat around your belly. and you can do something when you're unhappy with it. But because most people never look at their brain, they don't care about it. In 1991, I was 37. I'm a double board certified psychiatrist, board certified in general Psychiatry, child and adolescent Psychiatry is the top Neuroscience student in medical school. I didn't care one wit about my own brain because I'd never seen it. And when I saw it, I was sort of horrified because I played football in high school, had meningitis twice as a young soldier. And I had bad habits, like it's only sleeping four hours a night, was eating fast food, I was overweight. I just didn't even think about it. And so I developed a concept the week before I scanned my mom, and she had a beautiful brain. And I developed a concept called brain envy. I always say Freud was wrong. Penis envy is not the cause of anybody's problem. I've not seen it one time in 40 years. it's brain envy. You gotta like love and care for your brain. And that becomes easy to answer the question, is this good for my brain or bad for it? Which is why I'm not a fan of alcohol and I'm not a fan of marijuana. The second strategy is avoid things that hurt your brain and you just have to know the list. And, you know, whenever I post on alcohol or marijuana on TikTok, it goes crazy. You know, people just get so, oh my goodness, how can you say that? I wrote a blog last year called I Told youd so. And when I first met Tana, and you know Tana, when I first started dating her, she said, I'll never tell you I told you so. and she lied. It's her favorite thing to say. And I've been saying since I started looking at the brain that alcohol is not a health food. And then the American Cancer Society came out against any alcohol because any alcohol increases your risk of seven different kinds of cancer. Not to mention all you have to do is watch Netflix. The people who drink the most get into the most trouble. Alcohol is at the center of divorce, incarceration, conflict, and so many health problems. So you want to be happier, you want a healthier brain, kill the alcohol. and other things that nobody knows, like general anesthesia can damage the brain. And like, I didn't know that. Nobody ever taught me that. But I had a patient who I had her scan. And then after she had a knee replacement, she said, I think I have Alzheimer's disease. And her brain looked like she'd just been hit by a truck. And I'm like, I wonder if there's any literature on this. And there's a whole food fight in the literature among anesthesiologists on cognitive function after anesthesia. So for example, people have coronary artery bypass surgery have a significant increased risk of getting dementia. It doesn't mean you don't have surgery or anesthesia. What it means is no, that's a potential hurt. And so you have to do things that help. Things that I didn't know, like playing football is a brain damage in sport. I mean, you'd think most thoughtful nine-year-olds would come to that conclusion.

No.

Obesity. I published three studies now. Last one on 35,000 people. As your weight goes up, the actual physical size and function of your brain goes down, which should just scare the fat off anyone. And so, brain energy. Yes.

Big belly, small brain.

Well, and you've heard me say, if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. And I first learned this term from you, diobesity, where you're overweight and have high blood sugar. It's a disaster for the brain, because when you're overweight, it increases five of the 11 risk factors. You have lower blood flow to your brain. Your brain looks older, so aging, it increases inflammation, it stores toxins and takes healthy testosterone and turns it into unhealthy cancer-promoting forms of estrogen. And it's like with 72% of us overweight, because you have to ask the question, why America is the richest country in the world, 4% of the world's population, 15% of the COVID deaths. It's because we're unhealthy. And we need to do something about that beyond the vaccine and what pharmaceuticals there are. I've been disappointed that the powers that be haven't talked about we're sick as a society and we need to do better.

It's astounding to me, honestly, especially when the data is so strong. I mean, I mentioned this before in the podcast, But a study out of Tufts determined that 63% of hospitalizations for COVID were because of poor diet, which would literally, if we had everybody who was healthy and didn't have a poor diet, we'd literally have no problem with COVID It would be maybe a few people older or sicker would get die, but we wouldn't be shutting down society, we wouldn't be overwhelming the hospitals, we wouldn't be burning everybody out, we wouldn't be in this horrible situation. And no one's really said anything about.

It except Bill Maher.

I mean, it's true. It's insanity.

It's, it's just. I wrote about this first week.

I mean, the first week or so after Kobe, the data started coming out, and I was like early March, maybe early April, and I wrote an article with the diary Moses of fire and from Tufts and we published in the Boston Globe. But it basically said, you know, your.

Diet is playing a huge role in this time to smarten up, but nobody listened. Well, and you could get shut down. I mean, people get after me because.

I say your best defense against covid is your immune system. HerEsy. What heresy?

Why is that controversial?

Close this clinic. Get the FBI in there. Let's raid that quack.

Yeah, I mean, it's just insanity. But, you know, I've been a heretic my whole career.

So, God forbid, we tell people to eat healthy and exercise and get sleep and relax a little bit. God forbid. Shut us down for malpractice. It's crazy. It's crazy. Okay, this is really, really helpful, Daniel. So, tell us about the book, you, Happier youy Diet. And you talk about happy foods and sad foods. Like, I can imagine what they are. I mean, my happy food is chunky monkey ice cream, but it might not be yours.

Yeah, that's a food that you love that abuses you.

So, I love it, but it doesn't love me back. Well, for five years, it doesn't.

For five years, love you back. Yeah, but ultimately we want to feel good now. and later versus now, but not later. That's the goal, right? The goal is to not just be in the moment. That's a four-year-old's mindset. And I talk about the one thing. I don't know if you saw the movie City Slickers with Jack Palance and Billy Crystal.

I saw that movie. I love that.

Great movie.

And So Billy Crystal's character Mitch, he's having a midlife crisis and he goes to a dude ranch and he's with an old cowboy, Jack Palance, his character. And Jack goes, you just have to know the one thing. And Billy's like, your finger. And he goes, no, the one thing. And he never tells him the one thing. And in the next scene, currently, that Jack Palance's character is dead. And Mitch is so upset because he doesn't know the one thing. But I know the one thing when it comes to your health is when you do the right thing, stop feeling deprived. It's when you do the wrong thing, the chunky monkey ice cream. That's when you should be feeling deprived because you're depriving yourself of what you really want, which is energy and health and memory and relationship. And I love what the comedian said who lost a lot of weight. I'm trying to think of his name, is blocked on it. But he said it'll come to me. Eating healthy food isn't a re... Eating unhealthy food isn't a reward. It's a punishment. And I went, oh, he's going to keep his weight off because he's got the right mindset. that's the mindset of happiness. It's not a mindset of punishment. You punish yourself when you do the wrong thing.

You know, one of the things you also talk about in the book are the four nutraceuticals that really are important for happiness and mood. Can you talk about them? You might have touched on it earlier, but just can you explain what they are, how they work, and who should take them?

Well, you know, we mentioned saffron. I'm just a huge fan of saffron. Anything that can boost your mood, sexuality and memory at the same time. I think that's just one I don't ever miss. Omega-3 fatty acids are just crucial. I did a study, actually published it in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, where we looked at 130 scans and we had their Omega-3 index, Bill Harris's test, and people who had low levels of Omega-3 fatty acids in their blood had low blood flow. to the memory centers of their brain. And so the hippocampus is also one of the major mood centers in the brain. So I think omega-3 fatty acids are critical. Vitamin D is critical. And then it really depends on your type. If you're the persistent brain type, you know these people worried, rigid. inflexible. Things don't go their way, they get upset. No matter what it is you say to them, they argue with you. It's like it's nice outside. Oh, no, it wasn't. It was nicer yesterday, right? I mean, you know these people. They have a deficiency in their brain.

I try to stay away from them.

The front part of their brain works too hard, and they are some of the unhappiest of the group and serotonin enhancing strategies help them so much, like 5-HTP or L-tryptophan. I love 5-HTP. The cautious people, what makes them unhappy is they're always seeing the sky is falling. They look at the future with fear and calming down their basal ganglia with GABA, magnesium, theanine can be just so helpful.

Yeah, so there's a lot of stuff in your book that covers all this and people can learn out what type they are and what they need and there's questionnaires. Really, really great. The other thing you talk about is this whole idea of the noise in your head and how do we get rid of that inner stuff and making us depressed? Because, you know, our feelings are, follow on from our thoughts. Most people think our feelings generate our thoughts. They don't. It's the other way around. You have a thought and you have an interpretation of reality, whether it's true or not, it's going to change your mood. If you think your wife is cheating on you, even if she's not, you're going to get the same reaction as if, you know, you were chased by a tiger. And the body doesn't distinguish. So our thoughts generate our feelings. And, and you're talking about all these negative thoughts. How do we, how do we get.

Happy by getting rid of these thoughts? Or can we, or what do we do? Can we distance from them. Well, this section is just loaded with great strategies. There's just nowhere in school they teach you to discipline your mind. And there's a whole group of positive psychology habits. I start every day with today is going to be a great day. Nudge my mind with what's right. I know I was going to talk to you today, and that makes me I end every day with what went well today. People who do that for just three weeks notice a significant improvement in their level of happiness, just that one strategy. And about a year and a half ago, I lost my dad. And I've been doing that habit, like for years now. What went well? So I say a prayer and I go, what went well? and the night my dad died, I did it because it's habitual. It's just a habit I do.

And.

The critic in my head goes, really? We're gonna do this today on one of the worst days in your life. But because it's my habit, I began to think about the interaction between my mom and the police officer. It was hysterical. All the texts I got from friends and just holding his hand before they took him away to the mortuary and how soft it was. And then I went to sleep. These habits help you during hard times. We all have hard times. It's our habits. Where you bring your attention always determines how you feel. And you could nudge it in a positive way or in a negative way, left unbridled for many people, their brain goes to the dark place. And so these habits are so important. And then two other strategies quickly. Whenever you feel sad, mad, nervous or out of control, write down what you're thinking. Because you're right. Thoughts create feelings. Feelings create behaviors. behaviors create the outcome of your life. It starts with thoughts. So when you feel that, write it down. Tanner never listens to me. I had that thought and then go, is it true? And when I really think about it, it's actually not true. She's listened to all 16 of my public television specials, and then I just don't have to attach to it. so not the thoughts you have that make you suffer, it's the thoughts you attach to.

If you loved that last video, you should check out the next one for sure on getting to the root cause of all disease.

Then I had this really phenomenal aha.

Moment, like, you know, what if I.

Figure out where these nutrients are that I'm taking in pill form, where are they in the food?